Various forms of tufting machines have been used for many years, the most common variety including generally a needle for penetrating a backing material to carry a yarn through the backing, and some form of looper for holding the yarn to form a loop as the needle is withdrawn. While this basic technique is extremely simple, such a simple arrangement allows no variation for defining a pattern on the face of the tufted goods. In order to define a pattern on tufted goods, the usual techniques are to use short tufts and long tufts in some predetermined sequence in order to define a pattern, and/or to use cut tufts versus uncut tufts, or loops, to define a pattern. Much effort has been expended in attempting to provide various arrangements of machines to make the high and low tufts in a tufted fabric, and especially to provide the cut and uncut tufts as the fabric is sewn.
To provide a machine for producing both cut and uncut tufts, the prior art has normally utilized either a single looper so arranged that a loop will either remain on the looper and be cut or be doffed from the looper and remain uncut, or the prior art has utilized a pair of loopers, one for forming loops and the other for cutting loops, the loops to be cut being transferred from the loop pile looper to the cut pile looper.
The prior art utilizing a single looper wherein loops are either left on the looper to be cut or doffed from the looper to remain uncut have the inherent problem of requiring a large amount of apparatus which becomes generally unreliable. When it is considered that the device for urging a loop from a looper must be multiplied many times so that there is one such device for each looper, hence for each needle on the tufting machine, it will be realized that the quantity of the apparatus is unwieldy. In the prior art devices wherein two separate loopers are utilized, the primary difficulties lie in the positive transfer of a loop from the loop pile looper to the cut pile looper when a loop is to be cut, and the careful avoidance of transfer when a loop is to remain uncut. When such transfer is handled with positive motions and positive pickup, there has usually been a large amount of movable apparatus for shifting a looper to engage a loop, and when the transfer is not handled positively, the expedient of simply shortening the uncut loops to avoid the cut pile looper has normally been used. While such an expedient is effective, it precludes the sewing of fabric having uncut loops as long as the cut loops, and especially longer than the cut loops.